Racist Referees

"Racialists do not ever want the eyes of the world on their crimes"

C.L.R.James

Whatever garb the ICC tries to give it, actions of English matchreferee Mike Denness are evidences of blatant and outrageous racism. The haulingof Virender Sehwag for over-appealing when Shaun Pollock has taught the Indianshow to win verdicts with appeals lasting till eternity, the game has become acauldron of racial hatred. Saurav continues to be at the receiving end whenPollock and Steve Waugh often escape scot-free.

If Deep Dasgupta, Harbhajan Singh and Shiv Sundar Das receive suspendedsentences, one wonders what the match referee was doing when Kallis or Pollockwere uttering the sweetest of words for V.V.S Laxman. Finally, when it comes toVirender Sehwag (served a one match suspension with immediate effect), wordsfail to express the anger one feels at such an unjust punishment.

What renders the situation a greater complexity is the inability of theauthorities to do anything about this plaguing evil. However, with the BCCIpressing the ICC for a change in the match referee for the final test scheduledto start on Friday, the 23rd, at Centurion Park, one does see a glimmer of hopethat justice might be meted out. Going by the tenor of the declarations issuedat the press conference summoned by the BCCI President, the ICC is for once in atight spot. How it manages to hold on to its under-cover racist attitudes willattract the attention of the cricket world for the next few days.

Anyone with even a limited knowledge of the ICC's history will find itdifficult to expect any justice from this body,
which, history reveals has itself fostered a racist attitude. Its policies hadalmost resulted in the creation of a permanent fissure in the cricket worldduring the anti-apartheid campaign in the 1960s.

With the colored world up in arms against South Africa's racist policy,urging the ICC to ban the springboks from Test cricket, the ICC, with tacitsupport from the white bloc, continued to defer its decision on the subject formore than a couple of years. Negating persistent pressure from the Asians theICC had allowed the Australians and New Zealanders to
undertake official tours of South Africa in 1963-64.

Even recent memory bears testimony to the ICC's indulgence to white players.In the India Australia test series played earlier this year, Michael Slater hadclearly abused Rahul Dravid for standing his ground in the first test ignoringSlater's appeal for a catch. This was after television replays had demonstratedthat the ball had hit the ground before being caught. The match referee, as onmost occasions, did not bother to pull up a white sportsman for bringing thegame to disrepute.

There are many such instances that have shocked the cricket enthusiasts ofthe sub-continent over the last five years. What match referees have forgottenis that in trying to pull people up for bringing the game into disrepute, theyare themselves doing grave injustice to the game.

Even the attitude of the touring English team about the ongoing tour alsosmells of rampant racism. Even before the tour had started security advisors anddelegations had visited the country to oversee arrangements. It was as if theyhad forgotten that the empire had ceased to exist for over fifty years now. Onewonders why, despite assurances from the Indian Board, a security officer hasbeen appointed by the ECB to accompany the English team on the tour. The reasongiven is that he would tackle security issues if they do emerge.

A security problem - if it does break out -- can hardly be averted by thislone individual is a truth any sensible administrative body will find hard toignore!

One often wonders about the root cause behind the sudden increase of racistincidents in the cricket world. Is it to do with the changing dynamics of thegame (read shift in the game's nerve center to the sub-continent), or is itsomething that continues to exist for over half a decade? Deeper probe revealsthat it is part of both. While racist attitudes have been fostered for over fivedecades, incidents of racial discrimination have certainly been on theascendancy over the last decade.

Racism, it may be surmised, is becoming all the more rampant because India(read the subcontinent) has successfully usurped the white world's place as theleader of the cricket world in the 1990s, a fact hardly ever acknowledged by thewhites. The vacant grounds in South Africa, where children need to be invited towatch the game speaks of the sad plight of cricket in these countries.

The ongoing English tour, one can safely argue, would have been called offhad the BCCI under Dalmiya not made its presence felt. The words of caution thatIndia may send a second string side to England next summer was enough to makeany such plans of the ECB bite the dust. They were almost forced to continuewith the tour fearing massive financial losses, which they would hardly havebeen able to meet.

To compound problems, in both England and South Africa, cricket has longceased to be the national sport. While rugby, soccer or even tennis rank higherthan cricket in the English sporting hierarchy, rugby has by far outstrippedcricket in popularity in the land of the Springboks, facts they have hardly beenable to digest.

The recent actions of the whites may thus be read as attempts to demonstratetheir control over the cricket world. They are vain attempts to prove that theyare still the arbiters of a crisis ridden cricket world in the aftermath of theterrorist attacks of September 11. Despite all its woes, Pakistan has refused toshift its games to foreign soil, knowing fully well that its players will hardlyfancy playing to empty galleries, a fact demonstrative of the plight of cricketin the white world.

Accordingly, it can be safely stated that whatever the white world does willnot be enough to camouflage the truth. The truth, and a potent one at that, is-India and the sub-continent are the game's present and its future, cricket inthe white world may as well be dead without support from them. The empire, oncestrengthened by using cricket as an imperial tool has turned on its head, thesub-continent are the arbiters and Englishmen (Mike Deness included) meresubjects as far as the fortunes of the 'gentleman's game' are concerned.

Cricket, as Ashis Nandy had argued in his Tao of Cricket, is truly anIndian game accidentally discovered in England.

(Boria Majumdar is a cricket historian, currently doing his research workat Oxford)